“This man has faced so many challenges on his way to the White House. He's struggled in keeping his word about bringing this country back to the top, but he's given so many people …”
#2 of 10 from
My Favorite Things of 2009
by angelodignacio

Wiki

Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States, formerly the junior U.S. Senator from Illinois.

Early Years

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4th, 1961. His father, Barack Obama Sr., was born and raised in a small village in Kenya, where he grew up herding goats with his own father, who was a domestic servant to the British.

Barack's mother, Ann Dunham, grew up in small-town Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs during the Depression,and then signed up for World War II after Pearl Harbor, where he marched across Europe in Patton's army. Her mother went to work on a bomber assembly line, and after the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill,bought a house through the Federal Housing Program, and moved west to Hawaii.

It was there, at the University of Hawaii,where Barack's parents met. His mother was a student there, and his father had won a scholarship that allowed him to leave Kenya and pursue his dreams in America.

Barack's father eventually returned to Kenya,and Barack grew up with his mother in Hawaii, and for a few years in Indonesia. Later, he moved to New York, where he graduated from Columbia University in 1983.

The College Years

Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued...